A recent development in display technology is the adding of ambient lighting effects (further also referred to as ambilight effects) using an ambient illumination system to enhance the visual experience, for example, when watching content displayed on the display device, or, for example, for creating a certain atmosphere in an environment. This ambilight effect illuminates the surroundings of the display device, such as a television, with light associated with the content of the image currently displayed on the display device. For example, the ambilight effect is generated using an illumination system, which is part of the display device. The illumination system may illuminate a wall behind the display device with light associated with the content of the image. Alternatively, the display device may be connected to a remotely located illumination system for remotely generating the light associated with the content of the image. When the display device displays a sequence of images, for example, a sequence of video frames being part of video content, the content of the images shown in the sequence generally change over time which results in a need for the light associated with the sequence of images to also change over time.
When watching content displayed on the display device ambilight may, next to an enhancement of the visual experience, also be applied to reduce eyestrain. A variation in color and/or intensity from one image to another in video content may be relatively large. Using the ambilight system to illuminate the surroundings of the display device reduces the perceived large color and/or intensity variation from one image displayed on the display device to another, which reduces eyestrain.
An ambient lighting device is, for example, disclosed in PCT patent application WO 2006/003624A1, in which perceptual rules are applied to extract information from video content to enable an intelligent dominant color selection. The selected dominant color is subsequently used to drive the ambilight system such that the light emitted from the ambient lighting system is associated with the light emitted from the video content. A disadvantage of the known ambilight system is that a variation in the emission of the ambient lighting system from one color point associated with the first image to another color point associated with a second image still results in eyestrain.